Maya Angelou Opens Women’s Health and Wellness Center

Wisdom comes with age, and at 84 years old, Maya Angelou has lots of wisdom. But she says she picked up her most valuable piece of wisdom early on. "I learned a long time ago the wisest thing I can do is be on my own side, be an advocate for myself and others like me," she said. In that spirit, Angelou has taken up the cause of women's health.

"If I do that well enough, then I'll be able to look after someone else -- the children or the husband or the elderly. But I have to look after myself first," she says. "I know that some people think that's being selfish, I think that's being self-full."

Like the work being done there, Angelou says her women's health center -- which offers an array of clinical programs affecting women's health, including heart, wellness, cancer and surgical services, as well as maternity, emergency, bone and joint health and behavioral care -- will focus not only on treatment but on prevention, a critical step in closing the gap that she says is too often hindered by denial.

"The disparities are embarrassing," she says. "What they hope to do at the center is to coordinate all the aspects of women's health and wellness ... encouraging women to look after themselves. In that way, they can almost be sure to count on some prevention."

Last year, the CDC released its first periodic report addressing health disparities and inequalities in the U.S., which they say highlights the considerable and persistent gaps between the healthiest and the least healthy people in the country. Their research revealed striking differences in the uninsured rates for Hispanics and non-Hispanic blacks; research also indicates that black women have the highest rate of death from coronary heart disease of any group, and an infant mortality rate 2.4 times higher than that of non-Hispanic whites.